Intelligent harmony from analog instrument input in real time

I got an email for the Waves Harmony plugin. What appealed to me was that it includes “a ‘Generate Notes’ feature to create custom vocal harmonies on the fly.” However, apparently it only does this based on either setting the key, playing a MIDI instrument, or you may play the harmonies themselves on a MIDI instrument. Obviously not every song’s chords fit neatly into one key from start to finish, so setting the key in the plugin won’t always work. I’m a singer/songwriter who plays acoustic guitar, so playing a MIDI instrument wouldn’t help me either. I would want your plugin to generate harmonies based on its being fed my guitar signal. There are several pedal products that already do this sort of thing, such as the Boss VE-500 or VE-8, and the TC-Helicon VoiceLive series. I recently asked a Sweetwater sales rep if any plugins do it, and he thinks there are none. Maybe you could be the first! I’d much prefer to have the functionality at my fingertips on a computer or tablet screen instead of at my feet where I’d have to bend down with guitar in hand to tinker with it, and interact with a tiny, clunky screen (and the TC-Helicon screens are known to fail). Also, note accuracy is a MUST. I have tried several of these pedals and found that the harmony notes generated are not the ones desired, or flip clumsily from one note to another if the source signal (my voice) has even the slightest vibrato, sharpness or flatness. The feature needs to have controls to make it more or less forgiving. Perhaps it could have a dual mode that is based on both a specified key as well as the analog signal (i.e., the guitar) it receives. I would think such a product would be very popular with singer/guitarists like myself who want vocal harmonies on their solo gigs. I hope you will update your product accordingly, or perhaps come up with a whole new product (Waves Harmonies LIVE)

Would automating the key changes work? If you’re playing in time, then you should be able to enable latch automation on the key setting (how to do this will depend on your DAW, but will be well documented in the general case), and then skip the timeline to where it should change and set the new key. On playback it’ll use the changes.

If you need to be able to change it live, you probably need a MIDI control pedal and to configure different “notes” to set the key setting. I use LiveProfessor2 for this kind of thing, but I believe Ableton can also do it.

Waves has a key detector plugin, and it seems fine, but I’ve never done anything but fiddle with it. Not sure whether it can push settings into Harmony.

Should also add that I’ve got a guitarist who uses the TC Helicon H1 live and driven by his acoustic and it works great if you dial it in well. Going to take some testing to find the right intervals for your voice and style, and you’ll probably need someone else to help you judge the mix level, but I haven’t had any problems with it.

Thanks for your input, Steve…

Re: automating key changes / playing in time, to me that implies being bound to a click, and having to set up the song in advance. If this were the case, then the functionality I’m requesting would be unnecessary. In fact, the plugin itself would be unnecessary. If I were going to go through the trouble of assembling a song in a DAW to play along with live, then I may as well record real harmonies instead of using a plugin to synthesize them on the fly.

In the scenario I’m proposing, I’d be using the DAW only for live mixing, perhaps using MainStage instead of Logic Pro, so the plugin would have to work in MainStage, too. Freedom is what I’m after here. Plug in, play, sing, hear harmonies in tune with the chord you’re playing. As for MIDI control, yes, that functionality would be very useful. At the bare minimum one would need a hands-free means to turn the harmony effect on and off.

Re: H1, I’m glad that your guitarist has had luck with it. I’ve had the TC Helicon VoiceLive 2, VoiceLive 3 and the Boss VE-500. They work by plugging the mic directly into them, which I don’t like. I trust the mic preamps on a mixer far more than on an effect pedal. The gain and the EQ are much easier to tweak on a mixer, too.

Yeah, that’s exactly what it implies, which is why I had to check whether it would work for you rather than just straight up saying it was the answer. Some people use Ableton’s features to loop certain sections, so an automated harmonizer would make more sense than recorded backing vocals, but it entirely depends on what you’re playing (which, I’ll remind you, I have never heard before :wink: )

This functionality exists if you choose a DAW suitable for live performance. I’m pretty sure Mainstage can do it, if it can use the effect, but I’ve only ever set it up in LiveProfessor so the best I can do is tell you it exists and you might be able to find it.

I’ve run the pedal off an aux in the past (which was fun, I could change which vocalist was getting harmonies without telling the singer :wink: ), so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to treat it as an outboard processor than part of the mic chain. Just remember to turn the pedal mix knob to 100% and you’ll probably need -30dB on the aux output because it’ll be expecting a mic level input.